Rich like the Poet

An ongoing attempt at pursuing the 'vita contemplativa'

(Jacarandas in full bloom along Avenida Pres. Figueroa Alcorta, Buenos Aires. Photo: Dear Wifey)

“What was scattered
gathers.
What was gathered
blows away.”

~ Heraclitus, Fragments

Joel Bowman with today’s Note from the End of the World...

Empires... currencies... popular ideas and mass delusions... all things fade away, eventually. Only change, as the clever ol’ ephesian (above quoted) reminds us, remains the same. 

The season has turned here in Buenos Aires. The purple jacarandas are in full summer bloom. The parks and plazas resound with the laughter of children. Cafés and parrillas bustle with tourists and regulars alike, as wafts of fatty sausage and sizzling, thick-cut steaks filter through the city streets. 

There’s a curious feeling of optimism in the air... the unfamiliar hint of hope. Of course, it wasn’t always this way...

Your correspondent moved here some dozen or so years ago, back when the local currency, the peso, was changing hands at about four to the US dollar. Today, it goes for roughly 1,000 to the dollar (give or take a hundred). An unhurried lunch that used to set us back, say, 100 pesos... now necessitates carrying a hefty stack of 1,000 peso bills. 

A Bizarre Display

When it comes to matters of basic governance, there’s precious little at which the Argentines have not failed...and failed again. Currency collapse... trade tariffs (i.e. self-imposed sanctions)... hyperinflation... capital controls... labor controls... price fixin’... whole industry nationalization... plus the usual grift and corruption that comes with the dirty business of politics. 

For over a decade, we’ve had a front row seat to this bizarre display, a once in a lifetime opportunity for connoisseurs of human folly, hubris and conceit. 

But we didn’t decamp to the Paris of the South to write about high finance or lowly politics... to weigh pesos, count dollars or mine crypto (a story for another day)...

Rather, we came here to pursue what the 20th century philosopher, Hannah Arendt, called the vita contemplativa (the contemplative life). We wanted to be rich like the poet, in other words, not like the banker. To spend our days strolling the city’s broad boulevards, not chained to a Bloomberg terminal. To invest in our family and friends, not in our brokerage account. 

(Father and daughter, flâneuring the city. Source: Wifey)

A New Chapter

When we first arrived in the capital, in the middle of the night, we entertained grand ideas of becoming a failed novelist... learning the piano... flâneuring the cafés... losing chess matches in the plazas to wise old men, dressed in tweed jackets and sporting spiffy woolen ties. 

A life away from the ‘bread and circuses’ awaited...

Alas, as the great Greek general, Pericles reminds us... “Just because you don’t take an interest in politics, doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

And so, we’ve found ourselves swept along in the current, trying to make heads or tails out of the swirling events that shape our circumstance. We are grateful for all that Argentina has had to teach us... about crises, about resilience, about friendship and family and what really matters in this life. 

And we look forward to the next chapter, down here at the fin del mundo, one in which change will surely prove her constancy yet again. 

Stay tuned for more Notes from the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. If you didn’t catch our special invitation, we’re holding a live event this Saturday (Dec. 9th) at noon EST, to discuss the Death and Resurrection of Literary Fiction with Anya Leonard of Classical Wisdom (aka, Dear Wifey). 

As in the murky realms of politics and finance, the world of aesthetics is likewise subject to constant change... from romanticism to naturalism, realism to surrealism, modernism to postmodernism to futurism and beyond. Our ideas about what constitutes artistic merit are in a perennial state of flux. 

Now, in an age when artificial intelligence competes/cooperates with human intelligence, we draw on the lessons of literary history to help guide us into our next chapter. Join us at noon ET this Saturday, Dec. 9, for our live event. Best of all, it’s FREE and you can register with your email address, below. Hope to see you there!